Salt
by hapsby
Summary: Long live the king. [preseries AshuraFay.]


Oh, dear. My first (but hopefully not last) venture into the manga that stole my soul over Christmas break. I wanted to write something vague and poetic, but I think perhaps I only succeeded in writing many words that say nothing at all. But I'm intrigued by Ashura-oh (who was really not such a bad guy in _RG Veda_) and the world of Celes, so I had fun playing around with it.XD;; I hope you enjoy.

As with most things I write, this is dedicated to Cynthia.

* * *

_Salt_  
--by april (hapsby myuzaku)

"You could have anything, right?"

Celes at night was very, very, very cold. Fay could feel the sea stirring to the north, all choked up with glaciers. Ashura-oh's body was a long, warm, white and black stain smeared over his own smaller, waifish form.

"Oh-sama..." Fay whispered and trailed his fingertips across the smooth white plain of his king's skin, as if seeking out something. "We both know that's not how magic works."

He could feel the inky sky leaning into them, filled with a thousand million crystal stars. Magic was everywhere in Celes; it knotted and threaded together to become a damp cloud that pressed against Fay until he couldn't breathe. Ashura-oh was a solid, dull wall. There was nothing beyond him, nothing around him, nothing outside of him.

"Do you love me?" The king asked quietly, his voice scattering whisps of air and sound across Fay's hairline.

The blonde didn't answer. Instead, he seized Ashura-oh's face on either side and pulled him down into a hard kiss.

On the wall above Ashura-oh's bed, the clock chimed the late hour. Fay swallowed and tried to ignore the emptiness.

xxx

He was naked in a room lit with what seemed like a million candles. The flames danced and licked at each other, blurring and blending to form a soft orange haze in his vision. It was warm, warmer than most Celesian homes, and the aching _scentsightfeel_ of magic was blessedly locked outside with the snow and the cold.

"And this...is all I need?" Fay asked, still a little uncertain.

The answering smile was hooded, promising darkness and oblivion and something else Fay couldn't quite grasp.

"Then...do it," he breathed, and the words felt like an accusation.

xxx

The snow fell in feathery waves to lay upon the eternally frozen ground. In the inner kingdom city, the citizens were usually hard at work keeping the the dark cobblestone streets swept clean. But try as they might, the storm was too much for their efforts, and thus they had to settle for shoving it all off to the side in tall, heavy banks. The snow was thick and omnipresent and suffocating; it covered roofs with white blankets and smothered streetlights with its frozen incandescence.

Fay walked through the city streets, wrapped up snug and warm in his huge fur coat, the hood pulled taut over his head and covering his face. When he exhaled, smoky clouds of rime swirled up into the heavens before being dashed down to the ground again by the falling snow. He wrapped his thin arms around himself, knowing that his coat only gave himself the illusion of weight, and shivered violently, but not from the cold.

The tattoo, fresh on his skin as new blood, itched and burned. It covered the expanse of his back almost completely. A bird, a phoenix. Suzaku in icy, winter blue. It was a brilliant work, a masterpiece of ink and magic.

What a pity that Ashura-oh would never get the chance to appreciate it in its entirety.

xxx

"But do you love me?" Ashura-oh would whisper that same damn line, over and over and over again. Fay would writhe into the sheets, heavy and tired and shaking, and pretend not to hear.

Maybe no answer was worse than an honest answer, but Fay was good at nothing if not running away.

xxx

The castle was drenched in blood.

The sky was red, the stars were glowing crimson, and Fay was running madly through the halls. His body _hurt_; each breath he gasped in rattled against his bones and his legs were burning with exhaustion. But he ran and ran and ran and ran.

As he rounded the last corner to the throne room, he slid in a puddle of blood and slammed hard against the white-tiled floor. His staff fell from his hands and clattered loudly a few feet away, and he scrabbled violently for a moment in panic, then fell still. He rolled over onto his back and stared up at his hands. They were strange shapes, pulsing with magic, and he bit back a scream.

All around him were the broken, bloodied limbs; the twisted, shattered remnants of the dead. Once they were Celesian citizens, castle guards, nobles, common townfolk. And now they were mana-scorched corpses, stinking of magic and snow and decay.

Fay pulled himself weakly to his knees and crawled to his staff, using it to climb to his feet. He rested on it for a brief instant and then clenched his fists around it tightly, turning his vision to the throne room, and the cathedral beyond it, where he knew Chii and Ashura-oh were waiting.

xxx

Ashura-oh never, ever said _I love you_ to Fay. Only _do you love me?_ like a broken doll, again and again, echoing hollow against the white walls of his room, aching and twisting and never getting an answer.

xxx

Underneath the water, everything was beautiful. The eternal cold of Celes was a thousand times worse down here, but Fay didn't mind. He swam down, down, down, down, until his lungs burned for lack of air, and then he swam some more. When it was finally far enough, Fay cast the spell. It was fitting, really, for the king of unending winter to be entombed in ice.

"What did you want when you asked if you could have anything!" Fay yelled in a cloud of bubbles that rose to the surface of the water and shattered. "Was it me? Was it?" He couldn't stop the grin that twisted his lips. "Well, I'm gonna run away _forever_ and you will never, ever, _ever_ see me again!"

Without looking back, he swam back to the air, the sky, the snow, the magic, and Chii.

And the salty, biting chill of Ashura-oh's promise.

xxx

"What do you dream about?" Kurogane asked one night when they were forced to share a room.

Fay rolled over and peered at the ninja through a sheen of blonde bangs, grinning cheerfully. "Mm? What d'you mean, Kuropon?"

"When you sleep, you laugh sometimes. It's weird. And annoying."

There was a pause where the smile slipped, and then -

"I dream about _you_, of course!"

Kurogane groaned and covered his face with his pillow. "I don't know why I bother..."

Fay closed his eyes and let a sigh escape his lips.

_I don't, either..._

**xxFin.**


End file.
